A ship carrying weapons and sailing from North Korea was seized in Egyptian waters last August, and a United Nations investigation has revealed that Egyptian executives had purchased the weapons for the Egyptian military, according to The Washington Post.
The shipment contained more than 24,000 rocket-propelled grenades, and completed parts for 6,000 more, The Post reported. A United Nations report said the incident was the "largest seizure of ammunition in the history of sanctions against the Democratic People's Republic of Korea."
Egyptian business executives ordered the rockets while also attempting to keep the purchase a secret, according to U.S. officials and Western diplomats, the Post report said.
The incident is the latest in a series of private U.S. complaints about Egypt's attempts to get banned military equipment from North Korea, the officials said in the Post report.
The Egyptian embassy in Washington said that Egypt was cooperating with U.N. officials in finding and destroying the contraband items.
"Egypt will continue to abide by all Security Council resolutions and will always be in conformity with these resolutions as they restrain military purchases from North Korea," an embassy statement said, according to The Post.
However, U.S. officials said that the delivery was intercepted after U.S. intelligence spotted the vessel and contacted Egyptian authorities, basically forcing them to take action, the Post report said.
The officials said that the incident was among several clandestine deals that led President Donald Trump's administration to freeze or delay military aid to Egypt. North Korea continues to profit from selling cheap weapons and hardware to Burma, Cuba, Syria, Eritrea, and at least two terror groups, analysts said in the Post report.
The weapons were hidden in the cargo hold under 2,300 tons of limonite, loose yellow rocks that are a kind of iron ore, The Post reported.
North Korea continues weapons trading, according to intelligence officials and Western diplomats in the Post. Egypt is included on that list.
"Egypt was a consistent North Korean customer in the past. I would call them a 'resilient' customer today," said Andrea Berger, a North Korea specialist at the Middlebury Institute of international Studies in California, according to The Post.
On Sept. 12, Egypt's defense minister said that it had cut military ties to North Korea.
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